Bangkok

Last time I was in Bangkok there was a signature song playing almost everywhere, ‘One night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble’. Well that probably wasn’t the song title but definitely the chorus line and I herd it through out my stay here years ago. Last night was my first night here and I awoke to be informed by email by an Australian friend that there had been a military coup here last night. Really! Well, things did get a little quite sometime late in the night but I definitely didn’t hear tanks rolling down the streets, gunfire or cheering masses as you might expect at these times. But, then again, I am in Khaosan Road, a tourist ghetto away from any military or political significance. Then again some crackpot general might decide this is a good opportunity to round up foreigners and send them packing. I am actually lucky, the night after I arrived planes into Thailand were diverted to Singapore and other destination because the airport was closed and I may have been spending last night in an unscheduled elsewhere. Ah Thailand, you’ve got to love it. It survives SARS, bird flu, an economic meltdown, tsunami’s and various coups and seemly carries on without missing a beat. And perhaps that is the key. There is so much noise, chaos and ‘beats’ that people adopt a ‘come what may’ attitude to life. Ingrained in the Thai psyche is an eternal optimism and a roll with the punches survival attitude. Thai culture revolves around hierarchies; religious, political and economic and people seem to just accept their place in that hierarchy. That’s not to say people don’t hold ambitions of improving their situation in life but there isn’t such a ‘race to the top’ that you see in more industrialised western countries. In more egalitarian societies there is far more opportunity yet that also brings with it a certain degree of discontent from those unable to achieve that opportunity. To use an analogy you don’t get people standing around the water cooler bitching about why they didn’t get the promotion. In a country with little opportunity you don’t get that level of discontent and people have more an attitude of make the best of what you’ve got. That is probably one of the remarkable aspects of Asia in general, the fact that despite what we might consider a fairly meagre and subsistence life most people smile, laugh and are generous in spirit.

You know you have hit middle age when you can talk about visiting a place 23 years ago as an adult. I’m back at Khaosan Road. Bangkok was my last destination on my first trip OS travelling through Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia then Thailand. I arrived short on cash and did a couple of months teaching English as the only qualification you needed was to be a native English speaker. I remember working for the American English language school. Apparently I was informed by the manager that people wanted to practice conversational English by either Americans or English and that as I was Australian I should just tell them I was American as they wouldn’t be able to tell the difference anyway in the same way I couldn’t tell the difference between a Chinese speaker from Hong Kong, Taiwan or mainland China. I remember travelling all over Bangkok by public bus to clients homes and offices yet today the idea of using the public transport system seems rather intimidating. I’ll put that down to the confidence of youth.

I arrived at Bangkok airport at around midnight and had booked accommodation for the following night as I’d thought in my wisdom that I didn’t want to be trying to negotiate the city and lodging at that time of night. I had decided I would hang around the airport and catch the first shuttle bus into town which started around 5.30. I’ll put this down to a lesson learnt. Hanging around an airport for five and a half hours after a long haul flight is excruciating especially when the seats are designed so you can’t lay down and get comfortable. Hang the expense I’ll be catching a taxi into town next time. The second lesson learnt was to book accommodation based on location as I found my accommodation in the sex tourist part of town and wasn’t too comfortable with my company. I decided to sacrifice my booking fee and caught a tuk tuk across town to Khaosan Road. I might be in a tide of backpackers and tourists but at least I wasn’t being asked so often if I wanted ‘lady’, ‘massage’ ‘strip show’.

Khaosan Road is main street Asia for tourist. 95% of all Asia travel begins and ends in Bangkok. It is a staging point for travel into Burma, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia and beyond and Khaosan Road is the epicentre of tourism in Bangkok. When I was delivered by tuk tuk at Khaosan Road I was expecting radical changes from my time here all those years ago. I wasn’t disappointed. Someone had turned the volume up to around 1000.